


Intertwined

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams and memories, Fate & Destiny, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Misunderstandings, Multi, Reunions, Riku is maybe too good at lying to himself, Sora and Kairi are here to pull him out of it though, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-31 06:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: “They say if you share it with someone you really care for, it binds you together forever and ever, through eternity …”Riku doesn’t know if he believes in the myth of the paopu fruit – everyone already has their soulmates, decided by fate, and given to them on their fifteenth birthday. He doesn’t think that a fruit will be able to change something as big as that, even though sometimes he dreams about it.





	Intertwined

_“They say if you share it with someone you really care for, it binds you together forever and ever, through eternity …”_

Riku doesn’t know if he believes in the myth of the paopu fruit – everyone already has their soulmates, decided by fate, and given to them on their fifteenth birthday. He doesn’t think that a fruit will be able to change something as big as that, even though sometimes he dreams about it.

Sora and Kairi will be soulmates, surely. Sora is a month older than Kairi, and Riku half dreads that time, when Sora knows and Kairi doesn’t. Though, he knows his friend – he won’t be able to keep it from Kairi, and he probably won’t even want to. Why would he?

Riku watches the two of them play together, and darkness grows in his heart. The day before his fifteenth birthday, he wraps both his wrists so he won’t have to see the stranger’s name that will appear there. He has to believe that it will be a stranger’s name – the only thing worse than that would be seeing Sora or Kairi’s names there, because that would mean that it’s _his _fault that the two of them aren’t together. That would probably break him, he thinks. Against all odds he keeps up this illusion with himself, learning to shower with his eyes closed and rewrap bandages neatly and efficiently. When Sora’s soulmate name is revealed, he promises himself. Then he’ll look.

When a shadowy figure appears and promises him power – promises him a way to leave the islands, to avoid a future where he has to grow up to watch Sora and Kairi fall in love with each other – he gladly accepts it.

The first time the darkness eats away at him, Riku accepts it. He wants the power so that he can pretend that having it is better than having a soulmate that isn’t Sora or Kairi. But he’s never been quite as adept at lying to himself as he might wish, so it all falls apart in the end anyway. Riku has the taste of bitter ash on his tongue as he’s left with nothing at all, the door closing behind him just another reminder of opportunities lost.

* * *

Sora doesn’t think much about soulmates, not really – after all, he’s adventuring across different worlds, searching for his two best friends, and he isn’t even fifteen yet.

He saves the worlds and saves Kairi and goes looking for Riku, and when all the dust has settled he’s walking down a long and narrow path with only Donald and Goofy by his side. Castle Oblivion is huge, but Sora doesn’t know if it really is, or if the rooms they pass are built as they need them, to the size that Sora desires. When they retrace their path, the floors have a different layout, and need different cards to light the way.

Sora wakes up one morning and _Naminé _is emblazoned on his left wrist. He shows it to Donald and Goofy, and the name just drives him further forward. It doesn’t matter if he’s never talked about Naminé before, or if he forgot her. They were only kids after all, and she’s his _soulmate_. They’re meant to be together, and he’s going to do everything he can to rescue her from this awful place.

When all the illusions come crashing down, Sora looks down at his left wrist, which now says _Kairi. _Naminé tilts her head slightly, and slowly, he looks at his other wrist, where _Riku _is written, as plain as anything. Of course, Sora thinks. What other outcome could have occurred? Kairi and Riku are his soulmates, and he absolutely must do what he can to find them again. Riku is out there somewhere. Kairi is back on the islands. Naminé has promised to restore his memories, and after that, he’ll find Riku and they can go home to Kairi, together.

Sora steps into the pod and closes his eyes, and dreams about two hands clasped in his.

* * *

Kairi dreams of a boy she has never known, and one that used to be beside her.

Riku is missing, and has been since that awful storm struck the islands. Kairi washed up on the shore of the play island three days after the storm – three days, where most of the people of the island had been out searching for the three (three? No, there was only Riku and Kairi) two children who had been lost the night of the storm. Kairi had been found. A funeral had been held for Riku, his father tight lipped, his mother quietly repeating prayers under her breath.

Kairi had not gone.

Kairi refuses to believe that Riku is dead – _he’s just missing, _she’ll insist whenever it’s brought up. Selphie is just about one of the only people who indulges her in this, and says _wherever Riku went _when Kairi talks about him. The name on her wrist burns when she thinks about him, echoing how her eyes tear up.

She’s forgetting something. Something important.

There is another name on her other wrist, a name that sounds as familiar as the sky is. _Sora. _Did she know a Sora, when she was young? Maybe he moved to another island? But when she asks her father he cannot find a record of any Sora living on the main island, and even when he checks the residency records for the other three minor islands there is no one alive named _Sora. _

Kairi thinks of a kind woman in red, a woman full of energy, a protective man in black, and someone gruff who had called her _kid, _and how she’d taken shelter in a place that feels like a dream. Did she go somewhere else, in those three days when she should have been pulled under the sea? How is she alive? Where is Riku? Who is Sora?

She clings to her certainty that Riku is not dead, and she stares at the name _Sora _during class, during meals, during the dead of night when she should be asleep. _I’ll find you, _she promises, setting her jaw and staring at the name. _No matter where you are, I’ll find you. _

When her heart connects with a boy called Roxas, the fragile tendril of hope that had almost been crushed flourishes once again her heart. She’s right – there is something else out there, something bigger than she could have ever dared to believe in.

She goes home and she writes a letter.

* * *

This body has no soulmate name.

Riku wonders if that means that Ansem had no soulmates. It does happen – a soul born just at the wrong moment, in the wrong time to connect deeply to anyone else they will meet in their lives. If Ansem had been one of those people, then Riku can almost understand the drop, from scientist to someone with the urge to reshape the world. Riku has never been quite happy with the notion of soulmates either. Is that another point of connection between them?

In his lowest moments, Riku wonders if there is no name on his wrist because he is the one who doesn’t have a soulmate.

If Sora and Kairi had been soulmates, then Riku honestly doesn’t know if anyone else could step in to fill the position that they left. Just the thought of it turns his stomach, threatening to swallow him in a pit of despair. He still cares about Sora and Kairi, far more than he cares about himself, and he works tirelessly to try and restore Sora to full consciousness. Roxas fights at the cage that they have put him in, and Riku watches over Sora, and chases away any Heartless or Nobody that comes too close to the Twilight Town manor.

Naminé looks at him strangely sometimes, like she can tell what he’s thinking about. Riku does not share his thoughts about soulmates with her, even though she carries her unmarked wrists obviously. She is not human – she has barely existed for a year, technically. Riku does not know if she will ever receive the grace of another name on her wrist. They don’t talk about it, but that just means that Riku does not know her opinion on the entire issue. He has worked with Naminé for almost her entire life, but he does not think that makes him an authority in what goes on unsaid in the pauses between her words. The opposite, maybe. He thinks Xion was able to connect with her more deeply in the hour that they spent together, than the entire time that Riku has spent standing beside her as she ran diagnostics on Sora in his sleep.

He can hardly blame her for that. Not when he can’t make himself look further than Sora, most days.

Looking further than Sora means thinking about Kairi, and that he cannot do. She is living on the islands, and he does not deserve to see her, not after everything that he has done. Darkness stains him, and she is far too bright of a light to touch him now. The most that he can do for her is to restore her soulmate, and ensure that he makes it home safely to her.

So he stays away, and when Sora wakes up, he and Naminé leave that world so that there is no chance of Sora meeting either of them.

* * *

Sora can barely keep his eyes open for very long immediately after waking up, but Donald, Goofy and Jiminy swiftly bring him back to full awareness. When they emerge from the strange mansion that they have been sleeping in and Donald suggests that they investigate the area, Sora quickly agrees, because he needs a second to be alone.

He tucks himself in the shadow of one of the pillars that are in front of the mansion, and watches as Donald and Goofy walk forward to stare at the large gate, and then leave. Letting out a shuddery breath, Sora peeks at his wrists.

_Riku. Kairi. _

Sora can only hear his heartbeat in his ears, even though Donald’s quacking was loud a second ago. Sure, people had more than one soulmate – in books! In movies! It wasn’t something that happened normally, just a fairy tale that his mother told to him at night when he was a child and asked if someone could have more than one soulmate.

Sora looks up at where his friends are talking to each other, looks around the strange world that they’ve found themselves in, and tries not to laugh. A fairy tale, huh? That does sound about right.

Unable to wipe his grin off his face, Sora walks forward.

* * *

After Kairi has leapt through a strange dark portal, and been captured by the man with blue hair, and put in that stupid cell, and escaped that stupid cell thanks to a strangely familiar girl – that’s when she finds one of her boys, _finally. _

Riku must have grown a lot since she last saw him. She would recognise him anywhere, even when he’s wearing such a strange coat. The beat of his heart sings to her, echoes deep within herself to where the thrum of her pulse answers. Her soulmate. He has to be. And Sora wouldn’t try to hide himself like this, not from her.

“Riku!” she calls out, heart in her throat. He can’t turn away – he _can’t, _not after she waited for him for a whole year, not after she waited and waited and begun to doubt that strange certainty that he was alive. She needs to see him. She _has _to.

He pauses, and it’s enough time for her to get over to him, to lay her hand on his arm and then reach up and draw the hood down from his face. He looks away, but that doesn’t stop her from looking at him, at the new shape of his jaw, the new colour of his eyes.

“Riku,” she says softly, and it’s a question and an answer. She wants to know how he came to be like this, but what really matters is that he’s _here. _

“I’m not the person you remember,” he says roughly, as if that will stop her. She smiles at him and shakes her head.

“I don’t care about what happened,” she tells him. “I’m just so happy that I’ve found you.”

“I will take you to Sora,” he says stiffly, formally. “And then we will part ways.”

She’s dizzy all of a sudden, like he’s yanked her stable footing out from beneath her and then pushed her on her way down to the ground. “You – you can’t,” she says, aghast, hand tightening on his coat. “You have to come back with us to the islands! You have to come home!”

His eyes fall to her wrist, the only one he can see, and nothing in his gaze wavers. “I do not belong there anymore,” he tells her. “You are proof enough of that.”

He shakes her off, and stalks forward. Kairi can only stand, unmoving. If she tried to take a step she thinks that she really would fall down.

Naminé is at her side suddenly, a hand soft and supportive under her elbow. “He doesn’t know,” she says quietly. Kairi looks down at the wrist that Riku could see. Sora’s name is written across it, yes, but when she raises her other arm Riku’s name is there, as it always has been since her soulmate’s names appeared.

“What do you mean, he doesn’t know?” she says, bewildered. “He’s older than us! Surely, he knew first!”

“He refused to look,” Naminé says sadly. “He bound his wrists and never looked at what words were waiting for him. He does not know, like you and Sora know. That new form of his has no names at all.”

Kairi puts her hands on her knees, just so that she can breathe. How can he not know? It’s like Naminé has turned the world and set it on its side and is now insisting that this is the way that things ought to have always been. The awful thing is, it makes sense. Riku’s sudden distance. How his eagerness to leave the islands ate up his every spare moment. How his normally light banter had turned colder, just before they had all left.

“But he is,” Kairi says. “If he just _looked_ –”

“Riku has hidden many things from himself,” Naminé says quietly, a touch of sorrow in her voice. “You must be the one to draw it out of him, Kairi. He is used to fighting with Sora, but he cannot say no to you. That is why he avoids you, even now. You must be there to guide him back towards the light. I know you can do it.”

Naminé is close to her suddenly, eyes sharp and clear even as her outline wavers. “Naminé?” Kairi says, suddenly unsure.

“I will always be with you,” Naminé promises her. “Riku knows what is happening. Trust yourself, Kairi. You have more power than you know.”

Naminé steps into her and Kairi feels like she’s sluiced with cold water. When she blinks open her eyes again, there is only an empty space where a girl used to stand, but there is a soft warmth under her breastbone that lets her know that she is not alone.

She bites her lip, and goes after Riku. He won’t listen to her alone – she’ll wait until they find Sora. Then, he won’t be able to keep denying the truth any longer.

* * *

Finding Sora is easy. Riku just follows the burning light that even he can feel, and when they’re surrounded by Heartless, he puts a hand on Kairi’s shoulder and gives her the treasure that he found in Xemnas’s secret room.

She takes to the Keyblade easily – far too easily, without there being some other explanation behind her movements. Riku keeps an eye on Sora below and on Kairi beside him, and a part of him curls up very tightly. Kairi’s movements echo Sora’s, the combos similar and the footwork the same. It makes sense – Kairi was in Sora’s heart when he was learning how to wield the Keyblade, and they are soulmates. Riku tries not to think of Sora’s name on Kairi’s wrist, and fails abysmally. If Kairi weren’t in danger, he probably would actually be curled up in a ball. He’d wanted confirmation – and this is confirmation.

It still breaks his heart.

He can’t look at Kairi, and when Sora finally catches up to them he can’t bring himself to look at him, either. He turns his back even as their reunion sets something at ease within him. Sora and Kairi should be together – at least he’s managed to set that right. He doubts that anything can stop them now, but he should go after Xemnas, to make sure that Kingdom Hearts isn’t improperly used.

“Ansem!”

He freezes, even though he should just leave and get this over with. But he’s weak, for Sora’s voice and Sora’s attention turned on him, even though he thinks he’s addressing someone else.

“You… are Ansem, right?”

There’s a hesitation in his voice that Riku aches to hear.

“Sora, you know who it is,” Kairi chides him quietly. “You can feel it, can’t you? Deep in your soul.”

“You mean –”

Riku still has his back turned, because he’s weak, and he can’t look at Sora and Kairi, so perfect together, not when he’ll never be able to join them. His soul is lost to the darkness, this body the only thing remaining of his tentative connections to the light. It’s – alright. They need someone soaked in darkness to navigate this place, to sense where the places of most danger are and to lead them with a light touch to their goal. He can do that much, at least. For them.

“Riku,” Sora says, and Riku closes his eyes. This form doesn’t have a blindfold but he’s never wished for one more than at that moment. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he sees Sora, when Sora knows that it’s him. All three of them – their relationship has changed. They are no longer children, carefree with their only worries about which school assignment they have to do next. He doesn’t think he can bring himself to be their friend anymore, not when the two of them will always be more than that to each other. It would break him. But maybe he deserves to be broken. After everything he’s done –

“Riku,” Sora says again, and Riku doesn’t have to look to hear the tears in his voice. “Riku, I looked everywhere for you!”

Sora takes his hand and turns him around, and Riku still has his eyes closed. He feels the brightness of Kairi join them, and she sighs softly, a quick exhale of breath that he might have missed if he hadn’t been only listening. “Take my hand,” she asks him, and he cannot deny her such a simple thing. He really is a fool.

Sora’s light joins Kairi’s light, and then Riku sees them, without having to open his eyes at all. Sora reaches forward and takes his hand, and the three of them stand there, connected. Riku has never felt more whole in his life, never felt more seen and accepted – when it’s over this will only make things worse, but for now he revels in it.

“Riku,” Kairi says softly. “You are so silly. _Look_.”

At what? Their linked hands – Riku can see Kairi’s name on Sora’s wrist, and Sora’s name on Kairi’s wrist. It’s not like Kairi to rub something like this in, but he hasn’t spoken to her in a long time. Maybe she’s changed, as much as it hurts to think that.

“Riku,” Sora says. “Come on, man. Look!”

Sora squeezes his hand, and Riku looks down… at…

He can’t breathe, all of a sudden. He must be imagining it – this place isn’t real after all. It’s showing his old body, the one he had before he submitted wholly to the darkness. Maybe it’s just showing him what he really wants. Because there, on Sora’s wrist, is Riku’s name. And on his own wrist, Sora’s name. But…

“You really never looked?” Kairi asks, and Riku has to tear his eyes away from Sora, only to feel like his knees have been taken out when he sees his name on Kairi’s wrist, Kairi’s name on his. No – he can’t deserve this, surely. Kairi and Sora are too good, too light, too far away for someone like him. Surely he can’t have this. Surely it can’t be real.

When he blinks, they’re standing back at the Castle That Never Was, and he’s on his knees. Sora and Kairi are hovering above him, looking concerned, and Riku can’t stop himself from looking – at his name on Sora’s wrist, at his name on Kairi’s wrist, on Sora’s wrist, on Kairi’s wrist…

His are blank.

“We’re soulmates,” Kairi says joyfully, her voice ringing out. “All three of us!”

“Isn’t it great, Riku?” Sora asks, grinning widely. “Now all we need to do is take care of the rest of the Organisation, stop Xemnas’s plans, and we can go home!”

Leave it to Sora to phrase things as if they were that easy. Riku slowly hauls himself to his feet. He can still see his name, worn proudly by his… soulmates. He feels like he’s in an alternate dimension, one that’s a step off the world he’s used to operating in. Can this really be real?

“Just do that. Yeah.” He’s lightheaded. He needs some time to process this. Time which he could have gotten… if he’d just looked… anytime in the last two years…

“We can do it,” Kairi says firmly. “There’s no time like the present! Let’s go!”

Riku finds himself following them. Always following, trailing behind like a shadow. Maybe that’s where he’s meant to be. Protecting them, from the things that would strike at their weak spots. Well, if anything tries, he has a nasty surprise lying in wait.

Determined, heart in his throat, he follows.

* * *

Fighting alongside his soulmates is exhilarating.

Kairi is still working everything out, and Sora and Riku make sure to cover her in their fights, but she learns quickly. Way faster than Sora did when he was working all of this stuff out at the beginning, but Kairi has always picked up on new things pretty easily, so he can’t say he’s very surprised.

It’s different to just having Donald and Goofy beside him. After everything they’ve been through, Sora trusts Donald and Goofy, knows that the both of them have his back. He knows how they fight, knows how they’ll act, and he knows how to accommodate that and how to incorporate it into his own positioning and movements.

He… doesn’t know that for Riku or Kairi.

He sees some of his own movements in Kairi, and decides that it must just be because they practised together on the islands with their toy swords when they were younger. Riku fights so differently than what Sora remembers, sweeping movements and dark fire and potions thrown whenever necessary. They don’t know how he fights, either.

That doesn’t matter.

He slashes at an enemy and Kairi is there for a follow up, and Riku covers their blind spots, and Sora _laughs. _He feels giddy, full of unrestrained energy. He acts, and Riku and Kairi are _there. _They cover and complement each other beautifully. There’s a hum deep inside him that is keeping track of both of them, letting him know when they need help, and letting them attack when there’s a better role he could be fulfilling. They’ve hardly been around each other for long and they work seamlessly. Sora cannot imagine what it will feel like when they’ve fought alongside each other for as long as he has with Donald and Goofy.

When they find the King, he is with someone Sora does not know, but who challenges Xemnas and who tells them all that they must win. In the explosion, Sora holds tight to Kairi and Riku, and when the air clears, he is the first to notice that Riku is different.

He is limber and lean and when his blindfold flutters down from his eyes Sora cannot look away from how beautiful they are. Riku takes his cloak off, and is still for a moment, looking down at the bandages still covering his wrists. He undoes them carefully and quickly, and Sora beams at him when Kairi’s name, and then his, is uncovered.

“It’s real,” Riku murmurs, and Sora leans against him comfortably. How come Riku is still so much taller than him? Not fair.

“Yep!” Sora says cheerfully. “Real.”

Riku looks at him and swallows, and Sora wraps an arm around him because he knows that Riku doesn’t like crying, and he probably won’t like it much more when he’s in front of a whole audience. Riku slumps against him for a second, and Sora takes his weight and holds him close while he gathers himself.

“We must defeat Xemnas,” Riku tells them all, and he stands tall and proud and Sora falls a little bit more in love with him.

* * *

Kairi burns herself bright to keep up with Sora and Riku, but she does it.

They leap through spinning buildings and fight giant strange dragons and defeat Xemnas, time and time again, until she puts her hand on top of Sora’s, and Riku puts his hand on top of hers, and they send forth a beam of light made up of all three of them.

Riku burns himself up to destroy all of the Nobodies that spawn after that, and Kairi and Sora help him as they walk forth through the wondering dusk, through the endless quiet that seems to lead them nowhere.

Sora burns himself up to create a way forward, and Kairi digs her hands into the sand of a beach and is so, _so _grateful that here at the end of the world, there’s just the three of them, at a beach. There is nowhere that she would rather be.

Riku admits that he never thought he would be either of their soulmates, and Sora admits that he was always wanted to be just like Riku, and Kairi admits that she was always afraid of them leaving her behind.

It’s quiet, at the end of the world. She never expected that. She always thought that it would be loud, and distracting, and sudden. Instead, she can feel the darkness of this place slowly eating away at her. It will take a while to consume her completely, longer if she tries to fight it. But she’s sitting beside her two soulmates, and there is no way out, and she is content.

A bottle nudges against her foot.

Kairi stares at it for longer than she should before she laughs, throwing her head back. Of course. Of course. She picks the bottle up and hands it to Riku, who lifts an eyebrow at her as he fishes the paper out from within. He scans the poem there and something softens in his gaze, as he passes it to Sora.

“Thinking of you, wherever you are…”

Kairi smiles as Sora reads out her poem. A glow appears above the sea, and Sora leaps to his feet, holding out his hand.

“We’ll go together,” he says, and it’s a promise, made so long ago that none of them can remember it fully. A childhood of laughter and tears and of growing around and with each other has led to this moment, of quiet on black sand and defiance in the face of adversity.

Kairi helps Sora help Riku to his feet, and then the three of them walk towards that bright light, that promise of a new dawn.

With her soulmates by her side, Kairi wades into the water, lets it pass over her head, and closes her eyes. She’s ready to begin a new life, full of potential and full of love, with Sora and Riku by her side.

**Author's Note:**

> KHO got me emotional about kingdom hearts, surprising no one. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
